An interesting take by Frank Tipler on thisProving the Existence of God
A must watch for life extension enthusiasts. Touches on life extension, transhumanism, interstellar/galactic travel and multiverse.
It ends with Hawking saying: When we finally unravel the whole cosmic puzzle, we will become masters not just of our universe, but of the universe next door.
How remarkable is it that you and I might be at the brink of having the opportunity- no- the utmost honor, of witnessing this next step in the universe's and of our own evolution. To cure aging and live on to answer these questions.
The excitement within me just boils and makes my eyes tear, and makes my stomach do backflips.... What if...what if we're finally the generation that gets to see it all... what are the chances that we're finally the ones to make it into the greatest revolution that mankind ever launched. Might we be the ones? I mean, SERIOUSLY? Am I really living in this time, where I can get to see something that happens billions of years from now? Can I be that lucky? Wouldn't that be like winning the lottery 50,000 times over or something?
Man, how I wish to see it all happen. My deepest wish....
Thank you for that. It was mind-numbingly beautiful.
Is it possible to postulate the "Uncaused Cause" in physics to explain the beginning of the universe, thus proving the existence of a personal God? September 14, 2010 - by Frank J. Tipler
In 1966, Stephen Hawking published his first — completely valid — proof for the existence of God. Over the next seven years, he followed this with even more powerful valid theorems proving God’s existence.
So how did Hawking, who successfully proved God’s existence, remain an atheist? Simple. He simply denied that the assumptions he used in his proofs were true. As a matter of logic, if the assumptions in a proof are not true, then the conclusions need not be true. What assumptions did the young Hawking make? He assumed that the laws of physics, mainly Einstein’s theory of gravity, were true. In the summary of his early research, namely his book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Hawking wrote:
It seems to be a good principle that the prediction of [God] by a physical theory indicates that the theory has broken down, i.e. it no longer provides a correct description of observations.
In spite of what the atheist press is telling you, it’s looking bad for atheism today. And it is extraordinary the lengths an atheist like Hawking will go to avoid the obvious: God exists.
The alert reader will have noticed that in the above quote, Hawking did not actually use the word “God.” But this is what he really meant. To see this, let us recall just what the word “God” means.
Consider the opening words of the (original) Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the omnipotent Father, Maker of all things visible and invisible.” These words give the basic definition of “God” used by Christians and Jews: God is the Cause of everything, but He Himself has no cause. God is the Uncaused First Cause. In his Second Way, Thomas Aquinas proves the existence of the Uncaused First (efficient) Cause, and Aquinas concludes, “to which all give the name ‘God’ (quam omnes Deum nominant).”
So now let us return to the theorems of the young Hawking. By following the history of the universe back into time — in other words, by following the causes of the current universe back into time — Hawking proved that all of these causes had a common cause; a common cause that did not itself have a cause. This common cause was an Uncaused Cause that was beyond the control of the laws of physics, beyond the control of any possible laws of physics. Rather, the entire universe began at this Uncaused First Cause.
In exactly the same way that Aquinas used the word “create,” we can say that the Uncaused First Cause, whose existence was proven decades ago by Hawking, “created” the universe.
Hawking called this Uncaused First Cause a “singularity.”
But given the properties of this “singularity,” it is God. So I have replaced the word “singularity,” which Hawking actually used in the above quote, with what it really means according to Aquinas.
To show how this Cosmological Singularity — the Uncaused First Cause — can manifest itself as a personal God would require a book, which I have written. Indeed, the personal nature of God is not obvious in Hawking’s proof of His existence. But neither is it obvious in the proof of Aquinas, and Aquinas also required a book to establish God’s personal nature.
The interesting thing about Hawking’s existence proof for God is that it can be tested experimentally, since it is based on experimentally confirmed physical law. I published a paper in a refereed physics journal a few years ago pointing this out. Eventually the experiment will be done, but it will require tens of thousands of dollars for equipment.
So don’t despair, my fellow theists! The recent slew of best-selling books by atheists attacking religion, supposedly using science, is their last gasp. Remember the great words of Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
We theists are now at stage three.
Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press) and the author of The Physics of Immortality and The Physics of Christianity both published by Doubleday.